Why You Don’t See Hamas Firing Rockets on TV

I met today with a Spanish journalist who just came back from Gaza. We talked about the situation there. He was very friendly. I asked him how comes we never see on television channels reporting from Gaza any Hamas people, no gunmen, no rocket launcher, no policemen.. We only see civilians on these reports, mostly women and children. He answered me frankly : “it’s very simple, we did see Hamas people there launching rockets, they were close to our hotel, but if ever we dare pointing our camera on them they would simply shoot at us and kill us.”Wooh, impressive. Then I asked him “would you mind saying that on camera? I can film you explaining this…”For some reason I cannot really understand he refused and almost ran away. I guess my camera is as dangerous as Hamas threats…So just for you to know, the truth will never appear on the images you see on television.

As the Elderofziyon blog reports, this has long been common practice among Islamist militias.

It is worth reminding people about how reporters in southern Lebanon dealt with Hezbollah intimidation in 2006.CNN’s Nic Robertson dutifully accompanied Hezbollah on a planned tour of a bombed out building, repeating Hezbollah’s talking points about not seeing any military targets there and not telling viewers that it was staged entirely by Hezbollah.

Only when he was safely back in the US, and challenged on TV about his report, did he admit the truth, as reported by Newsbusters:

Hezbollah has “very, very sophisticated and slick media operations,” that the terrorist group “had control of the situation. They designated the places that we went to, and we certainly didn’t have time to go into the houses or lift up the rubble to see what was underneath,” and he even contradicted Hezbollah’s self-serving spin: “There’s no doubt that the [Israeli] bombs there are hitting Hezbollah facilities.”